The scorch was still on the decking.
He hadn’t thought it would be. A hundred and forty days. Months of the Unbanded holding the terminus, Gilt and Lancers coming and going, people walking over it. He’d thought someone would have painted over it, or the iron would have rusted, or it would have faded.
It hadn’t.
On the dock at the top of Rib Eight, under the terminus lamps — which were glowing now, clear and gold and red and white, from the channels in their poles — by the wall of the drum-shed, there was a shape burned into the iron decking. Black. Sharp-edged. The paint gone, the iron under it blued and pitted from heat.
A man. Sitting. Back against the wall. Legs out.
Him. Where he’d sat on the night of the bargain, after Ollo’s hand on his wrist, with the grey coming up his arms and the fire in his bones too hot for his body to hold.
He stood and looked at it.
Wick stood beside him. Not behind. Beside. Looking at it too.
“I sat there,” said Wick. Pointing. A meter from the scorch. “On a drum. With a rag on my throat. For an hour. Watching you go grey.” His hand went to his throat. To the bandage. To the eight old burns under it, and the root-wound, healing. “I couldn’t stop shaking.”
“I know.”
“You were dead,” said Wick. “For a bit. On the tarp. Ollo’s face changed.”
“I know. You told me.”
Wick looked at the scorch for a long time.
“It’s weird,” he said. “Being here. With you. Not being scared.”
Creed looked at him.
“I mean I’m scared,” said Wick quickly. “I’m always scared. But not — not of you. Not like on the dock.” He swallowed. “It’s weird.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I —” Wick stopped. “Can I sit there? Where I sat?”
“It’s your spot.”
Wick went and sat down on the iron decking a meter from the black shape, where an upturned drum had been, a hundred and forty days ago. He sat cross-legged, with his comm-set in his lap, and looked at the scorch, and at Creed standing over it with his black arm and his ringed eyes.
“There you are,” said Wick. Very quietly. The way he’d said it on the decking, with the burns fresh on his throat.
“Here I am,” said Creed.
They went down the street-stairs into the lower Eighth.
The last time, Brann had come down these stairs with his hands up. Thirty-one hours down the spine from the Second, every step away from Sere’s pull. The Unbanded had nearly shot him. Creed had stood at the bottom with the gold cylinder on its pole behind him and said I don’t have the gold anymore. But I know somebody who’s got something.
The gold cylinder on its pole was still there. At the bottom of the stair. Dark. Its tank dry — a Ninth-made cylinder, filled with tempered gold, that had run out sometime in the last month.
But the pole was glowing. The iron of it. From the channels the Concord had run up every lamp-pole on every rib, so the cylinders could feed the street.
Clear and gold and red and white. Up the iron. Into the dead cylinder. Lighting it faintly from below.
People were in the street.
The lower Eighth. Militia families. Mids. Spindle Row and Coil Street and Lantern Walk. The ones who’d stood under Corwen Ash’s Bell when it cracked. The ones Dorne had walked among, nightly, a hundred and forty days ago, as the Prior’s girl. They were in the street, in the morning, not working. Standing. Sitting on steps. Looking up — at the line of yellow, far, far above, past the dark Higher Ribs, at the top of the world.
And looking at each other.
They saw him come down the stair.
He felt it. Their hearts. Not the way the street had felt the morning after the dock — stepping back, making the sign against bad luck, two fingers to the forehead. Not that.
Something else.
An old man on a step. Thin. Militia-straight, still, under the stoop of years. He watched Creed come down the stair. And then — slowly — he lifted his hand. Not two fingers to the forehead.
Two fingers on a right hand. Raised. The way Sabine had raised hers on the Collar’s battlements, after the Wardens fell.
Sabine’s sign. He didn’t know how it had come down here. Through the net, maybe. Through the stories.
Creed lifted his hand back.
Hedda Dorne’s door was open.
Second floor of the tenement on Lantern Walk. Three rooms. Every surface scrubbed. A window looking down the curve of the Eighth toward the gulf. And at the window, in the hard wooden chair that had been her husband’s, Hedda Dorne. Seventy. Square. Thick-armed. Grey hair cropped short in the militia way.
Her hands in her lap. Glowing. Faint. Warm.
She looked at him when he came in. At his eyes. At the ring around them.
She didn’t step back. She didn’t make a sign.
“Sit,” she said. “I’ll make tea.”
He sat.
She made tea. The old way. In a pot, on a burner — the burner’s old Catalyst coil glowing now, clear and gold and red and white — with the leaves loose, poured through a strainer into the thick handle-less cups that had been her mother’s. She put one in front of him. One in front of Ollo. One in front of Wick.
“Drink it,” she said. “It’s hot.”
He drank it. It was very hot. He could feel the heat. He could feel the cold. He could feel both, in the light at his center, meeting the tea as it went down, the way two people meet in a doorway.
Hedda sat down in her husband’s chair.
“She’s alive,” said Hedda Dorne. Not a question.
“She’s alive.”
“Moraine said. On the net. Every night, I’ve been at the speaker on the corner. The one they set up for the song.” Her square face didn’t move. “He said a lot of things. About her. Holding roots. Bleeding. Saying stop dripping on me.” Something at the corner of her mouth. “That sounds like her.”
“It was.”
“Where is she.”
“The Axis. The top of the neck. With Brann. There are a hundred and thirty people up there who walked in wheels their whole lives. She’s carrying them down.” He paused. “She said to tell you. She’s up there. She’ll come down.”
Hedda nodded.
“And she said —” He stopped. “She said to tell you she saw the sun.”
Hedda Dorne sat very still in her husband’s chair.
She looked out the window. Up. At the line of yellow at the top of the world.
“So did I,” she said. Very quietly. “On the beat. At this window.” She looked down at her glowing hands. “And then I went and put the kettle on. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“That’s what she’d have done.”
“It’s what she learned from me,” said Hedda. “When there’s nothing to do, put the kettle on.” She drank her tea. “Thirty years, my husband came home and sat in that chair. Some nights he’d broken heads. Some nights he’d carried people out of a collapse. And I put the kettle on.”
She set her cup down.
“Last time you sat there,” she said, “I asked you who tells you the difference. Between the nights.”
“I remember.”
“You said: Ollo. Wick. Sabine. My daughter. Mirelle.” She looked at Ollo. At Wick. “I said listen to them.”
“I did.”
“Did you?”
He looked at her. At her square face. Her glowing hands.
“On the dock at the top of this rib,” he said. “I had my hand on Wick’s throat. And Ollo put his on my wrist and said the shift was over. And I listened.” He looked at Ollo. “In the root of the god’s mind, my hands were tearing me apart. And Wick knelt in front of me and told them what scared is. And how to wait for the horn. And they listened.” He looked at Wick. “Your daughter held the roots off my neck with her bare hands. Mirelle sang until her voice broke for good. Sabine poured out a cup.” He looked back at Hedda. “I listened. Every time. They told me the difference, every time.”
Hedda Dorne looked at him for a long time.
“And now?” she said. “With the god dead and the light out and that line at the top of the world. With your hands — with whatever’s in you now.” She looked at his black arm. At the script, glowing white and red. “Do you still need telling?”
“Yes,” said Creed.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Yes,” he said again. “Everybody does. That’s what I found out. In the god. The god needed telling. Its hands needed telling. When to hold and when to let go. When to eat and when it’s enough.” He looked at his cup. “It’s not a thing you grow out of. It’s a thing you keep doing.”
Hedda Dorne looked at him for a long, long time.
Then she picked up the teapot and poured him another cup.
“Good,” she said. “Drink it. It’s hot.”
Jory Tamm’s mother lived on Spindle Row.
Brann had told him. In Hedda’s kitchen, a hundred days ago, eating, talking, the night before Coronet. Jory Tamm. Twenty-two. Fresh out of the Watch academy. He was nervous. He used to curl and uncurl his hand. He’d only signed up for the Watch because his mother was proud of the uniform.
Flat seven. Spindle Row. Third floor.
He stood at the bottom of the stair for a long time.
“You don’t have to,” said Wick. Beside him.
“Yes I do.”
“She doesn’t know. That it was you. Nobody told her. The net never said.” Wick’s rasp shook. “She just knows he died on the terminus. Brann told her. In the — before. When he came down. He said Jory died on the dock, with the Prior’s hand in him. That’s all.”
“I know.”
“So you don’t have to —”
“I put my knuckles through his face, Wick,” said Creed.
Wick went quiet.
“Snake had me,” said Creed. “I know. You’ve told me. It wasn’t me. I know.” He looked up the stair. “It was my hand. And she doesn’t know. And she should.”
He went up.
She was younger than Hedda Dorne. Fifty, maybe. Thin. A Mid face, plain, worn. Her hair tied back in a cloth. Her hands — he saw them as she opened the door — glowing. Faint. Gold.
She looked at him.
At his eyes. His black arm. The spurs on his knuckles.
He watched her see them. Watched her face go still.
“You’re him,” said Jory Tamm’s mother. “The one from the net. The — everyone’s been saying.” Her voice was thin. “The Belly Thing. That’s what the Concord called you. Before.”
“My name’s Creed.”
She looked at him for a long time.
“Why are you here,” she said.
“To tell you about Jory.”
She didn’t move. Her glowing hand on the door. Her face very still.
“Brann told me,” she said. “Brann Oster. From the Watch. He came here. Before — before everything. He said Jory died on the terminus. On the dock. He said the Prior had his hand in him. Made him fight.” Her voice cracked. “He said Jory didn’t want to be there.”
“He didn’t.”
“He never wanted to be anywhere I sent him,” said Jory Tamm’s mother. “Not the Watch. Not the academy. He went because I was proud. I was so proud. Of the uniform.” Her hand on the door shook. “Brann said he died. He didn’t say how.”
“I’m here to tell you how,” said Creed.
She looked at him.
And he told her.
He stood in the doorway of flat seven on Spindle Row and told her. The dock. The night. The cable humming. Sere sliding down it with two Choir-born on strings, their eyes gone gold, their faces empty, moving like fingers on a hand. The fight. Being on his back on the decking with Jory’s hands at his throat. The bargain. The fire going into his bones. His knuckles opening. The spurs coming out.
Going into Jory’s face.
He didn’t make it softer. He didn’t make it harder. He told it the way it was.
When he finished, she was crying.
Silently. Standing in her doorway with her glowing hand on the door and tears running down her plain worn face. Not looking away from him. Not once.
“Did he —” She stopped. Swallowed. “At the end. Did he say anything.”
He thought about it. About the young one under him on the decking. About his face. About the curl and uncurl of his hand on the edge of the slab in Coronet, the nervous young one, who never said anything at all.
“No,” he said. “He didn’t say anything. He wasn’t — Sere had him. All the way. He wasn’t there to say anything.” He paused. “In the cellar. Before. On the slab. He sat on a stool next to me. He was nervous. He kept curling his hand. Uncurling it. On the edge of the slab.”
Jory Tamm’s mother made a sound.
“He did that,” she said. “Since he was —” She stopped. “He always did that. When he was scared.”
“He did it the whole time.”
She stood in the doorway.
“I’m sorry,” said Creed. “I didn’t — it wasn’t me, driving. But it was my hand. And you should know. That’s all. You should know whose hand.”
She looked at his hand. His right hand. The spurs on the knuckles. Four short points of dark ivory, red-veined, smoldering faintly.
She looked at it for a long time.
Then she reached out. With her own glowing hand. And touched them. The spurs. One at a time. Lightly. The way you’d touch something you needed to know was real.
He didn’t move.
“Warm,” she said.
“They’re always warm.”
She took her hand back.
“His name’s on a wall,” she said. “Brann said. Somewhere up. At the — at the Collar.”
“I carved it. Jory Tamm. Eighth Rib Watch. Twenty-two. He didn’t want to be there.”
She closed her eyes.
“Thank you,” she said. “For saying that. That he didn’t want to be there.” She opened her eyes. “It’s true.”
“It’s true.”
Jory Tamm’s mother looked at him in her doorway on Spindle Row for a long time.
“I don’t forgive you,” she said. Quietly. “I don’t know if I will. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if there’s anything to forgive, if it wasn’t you.” Her voice shook. “But you came. You came up the stair and stood in my door and told me. Nobody else did. Not the Watch. Not the Concord. Not the Prior.” She looked at his eyes. “You came.”
“Yes.”
She nodded. Slowly.
“Go,” she said. “Please. I’d like to be by myself now.”
He went.
At the bottom of the stair, he stopped. And stood with his back against the wall of the stairwell with his eyes closed.
Wick came and stood beside him. Didn’t say anything.
Ollo came and stood on his other side. Didn’t say anything.
After a while, the light at his center said, very quietly, glass and ember:
“That was kind.”
“It didn’t feel kind.”
“No,” said the voice. “It doesn’t always.”
Flat thirteen was at the other end of Spindle Row.
He hadn’t meant to go there. He’d meant to go to Coil Street. But Spindle Row ran along the curve of the Eighth, and he walked it, and he passed number thirteen, and he stopped.
Teo Brask, flat thirteen, Spindle Row, the old cable-man on the roof. Hanne Dray’s message, to every runner in Halden, the night before the fall. Says the bites are cut.
Teo had lived here. Before Halden. Before Rib Seven. Before he went down to Halden after Kon, to be closer to the cables he’d spent his life on, and to a mule from the Belly who’d lived in his spare room on Rib Seven and asked him about anchorages.
The door was shut. Nobody had lived there for a long time.
He put his hand on it.
It opened. Not locked. The way doors on the Eighth weren’t locked, in the old days, Teo had told him. Nothing worth taking, son, and everybody knows everybody.
Two rooms. Dust. A cot. A table. A shelf.
And on the shelf, a book.
He knew it. He’d seen it on Rib Seven. Teo had carried it from here to there, and then — he’d thought — to Halden. He’d thought it had gone down with Halden. With Teo.
It hadn’t. It was here. Teo must have had two. Or left this one behind when he moved, meaning to come back for it.
He took it off the shelf.
Heavy. Old. Cloth covers, faded. The plates inside. Colored. Old pictures of the dead world before the god. He’d turned through it in Teo’s flat on Rib Seven, the long evenings after shift, while Teo dozed in his chair. A forest, green. A city, strange and tall. A field of grass with something round and yellow above it.
He turned to the page.
The blue page. The sky. A plate of pale blue with soft white shapes drifting across it.
He looked at it for a long time.
Then he closed the book and turned around and held it out to Wick.
Wick looked at it.
“What —”
“Teo’s,” said Creed. “His book. The one with the plates. The sky.” He held it out a little further. “You never saw it. On Rib Seven. You were in the Void.”
Wick took it.
He sat down on Teo’s dusty cot with the book in his lap. And opened it. Slowly. Turning the plates. The forest. The city. The field. The sun.
The blue page.
He stopped there.
He looked at it for a long time. In the dim light of Teo’s flat, with the faint glow from the old lamp-channel in the wall.
Then he got up, and went to Teo’s one window — small, dirty, looking up the curve of the Eighth — and held the book up beside it. So he could see both. The blue page. And through the window, past the dark Higher Ribs, far up, the line of yellow at the top of the world. And above it, if you looked hard, a sliver of blue.
He held them side by side.
“It’s not as good,” said Wick.
Creed looked at him.
“The picture,” said Wick. His rasp of a voice shaking. “It’s not as good as the real one. The blue’s wrong. It’s too — it’s too flat. The real one’s —” He stopped. “The real one goes back. Forever. You can feel it going back.”
“Yeah.”
Wick lowered the book.
“Teo saw it,” he said. “The picture. His whole life. And he never saw the real one.”
“No.”
“He would’ve liked it,” said Wick. “He’d have stood on his roof and looked at it all day.” His face crumpled. “He’d have said, look, son, it goes back forever.”
Creed didn’t say anything.
Wick held the book against his chest. The way Mirelle held her tablets. The way Ollo held the ledger.
“Can I keep it?” he said.
“It’s yours.”
Maren Holt’s father had a grey-cap stall on Coil Street.
He was there. Behind it. An old man, square, militia-built gone soft, with a canvas apron and a tray of grey-caps and a little brass hand-bell on a hook at the corner of the stall. The kind the street-sellers rang.
Creed stopped in front of it.
The old man looked at him. At his eyes. At his arm. And knew. Creed watched him know.
“She made one sound,” said Creed.
The old man went very still.
“At the end,” said Creed. “On the dock. On the Eighth. Sere had her. All the way. Like Jory Tamm. She wasn’t there. She didn’t say anything. She fought like a finger on his hand.” He held the old man’s eyes. “And at the very end, when — when it was over — she made one sound. Small. Surprised. Like for just a second he’d let go of her, and she woke up, and found herself there.”
The old man’s square face didn’t move.
“I carved it,” said Creed. “On the wall at the Collar. Maren Holt. Eighth Rib Watch. Choir-born. She made one sound.”
The old man stood behind his stall for a long time.
Then he reached up and took the little brass hand-bell off its hook.
He rang it. Once. Small. Bright. The sound of a market.
And let it fade out.
All the way.
Until it ended.
“She used to ring it,” said Maren Holt’s father. His voice was rough. Old. “When she was home. From the Watch. She’d stand behind the stall with me and ring it for the customers. She said it was the best sound on the Eighth.” He looked at the bell in his hand. “I haven’t rung it since she went.”
He put it back on its hook.
Then he picked up a paper cone from the stack at the end of the stall and filled it with grey-caps. Carefully. The best ones. From the top of the tray. And held it out.
“For the walk,” he said. “Wherever you’re walking.”
Creed took it.
“The Belly,” he said. “Then the Flats. Then the Basin.”
“Long way.”
“It’s the long way down.”
The old man nodded slowly. He looked up — past Creed, past Coil Street, past the dark curve of the Higher Ribs — at the line of yellow at the top of the world.
“She’d have liked to see that,” he said.
“Yeah,” said Creed. “She would.”
They took the line down from the lower Eighth’s terminus at the end of the second watch.
A capsule. One of the old Concord courier cars. The cable singing over the sheaves. Down. Toward the Ninth. Toward the Shelf. Toward the Belly.
Wick sat on the floor of the capsule with Teo’s book open on his knees. On the blue page. Not looking at it. Looking out the capsule’s little window, up, at the line of yellow, getting further away as they went down.
Ollo sat across from him. With the paper cone of grey-caps. Eating them. One at a time. Slowly.
“Good,” said Ollo. About the grey-caps.
Creed sat by the door with his back against the capsule wall.
He thought about Hedda Dorne, pouring him another cup. Good. Drink it. It’s hot.
He thought about Jory Tamm’s mother, touching the spurs. Warm. I don’t forgive you. I don’t know if I will. You came.
He thought about a little brass bell on a hook at the corner of a grey-cap stall, ringing once, and fading, and ending.
He put his hand in the inside pocket of his father’s jacket. Felt the two faces there. Folded. Light. Felt the shard of Lumen glass. The 402 slate. Ferrin’s old note. Kon’s dark eye. The seed-disc. The little brass bell an old woman had given Wick on the stair at the Collar, for when somebody needs to hear one end.
He took the bell out.
He looked at it for a while.
Then he rang it. Once. In the capsule. Small. Bright.
And let it end.
Wick looked up from Teo’s book.
“What was that for,” he said.
“Maren Holt,” said Creed. “Jory Tamm.” He put the bell back. “Everybody on the Eighth.”
Wick looked at him for a long time.
Then he went back to looking out the window. Up. At the line of yellow. And after a while, very quietly, under his breath, the way he’d done it on the dock and in the root and in the Clock Hall —
“Received.”
RIB EIGHT
VISITS: 4 (HEDDA DORNE, FLAT 7 SPINDLE ROW, FLAT 13 SPINDLE ROW, COIL STREET)
DESCENT: CONTINUING
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